24 June 2010

Medallion Cabinetry introduces custom colors


Have you ever wished you could have a lavender hutch? Even better, would you like that lavender hutch to be  Sherwin-Williams 6548 Grape Mist? How about Benjamin Moore 2072-60 Beach Plum? Or maybe you're a Pantone person and you're looking for PMS 257. What ever the source, Medallion Cabinetry can simulate that color as a painted finish.


It used to be that if you had a need for a special paint color on cabinetry, you'd order the cabinetry unfinished and then have it painted in the field. This method would sometimes get you where you wanted to be but just as often would leave you with something less than what you were expecting.

Medallion Cabinetry's new Expressions custom paint color process takes away the guess work and leaves you with a multi-step, catalytic paint that will look great and stand up to normal wear and tear far better than paint from a can ever could.


How it works is pretty straightforward. A client sends a paint swatch  or 3" x 3" painted wood chip to Medallion. Upon receipt, Medallion will analyze the sample with a spectrophotometer and it will then generate a formula for that particular color. Once they establish a color formula, they then mix up a test batch of the custom paint and prepare a sample. The sample goes through the typical stages of finishing (sanding, priming, painting, oven curing, top coating and oven curing again) only in a paint booth and curing oven dedicated to the Expressions program. At the end of that process is a full-size sample cabinet door.


The sample's compared to the original swatch and if it's a good match the sample door gets cut in half. One half sample goes back to the client for approval and the other half stays with Medallion.


Upon sample approval, the cabinetry goes into production. When the completed cabinetry ships a few weeks later, Medallion will cut its remaining half sample in half again and ship a quarter of the originally-approved sample with the order.


It's a pretty slick program and the costs involved are reasonable. Painted finishes are always a premium, and the custom Expressions program comes in at 10% higher than a stock paint color. Standard painted finishes cost an additional 14% on plywood constructed cabinets and 18% on furniture board construction. For Expressions custom color, the surcharge is 20% on plywood construction and 24% on furniture board construction. The benefit to approaching custom color this way is in the result of course. Having cabinetry painted in the field will cost about the same amount of money but there isn't a field-applied paint out there than can compare with a multi-step, oven-cured catalytic paint when it comes to longevity and resilience.

Medallion Cabinetry's sold all over the US and theirs is a product I've been selling proudly for the last five years of my life.

If you have any questions about this finish option or any of Medallion's offerings, feel free to ask it here or to send me an e-mail privately. So the next time the topic of custom kitchen cabinetry colors comes up, think of Medallion Cabinetry.

23 June 2010

Oh beautiful for spacious skies

For amber waves of grain


For purple mountain majesties



Above the fruited plain!


Now, how does this stuff fit into all that talk of design around here yesterday?

Forbes and Lomax rethought the light switch


Now that's what I call a light switch.

That switch and the rest of the switches, dimmers, outlets and related plates were made by London-based Forbes and Lomax. Forbes and Lomax is a 20-year-old company that identified a problem; switch plates are an ugly, necessary evil; and then they set out to fix the problem.









Fix it they did. These things are fantastic in that they all but disappear. Their products are now available in the US and Canada and they have a product to fit any application you can dream up. Many thanks go to the blog Six Different Ways for pointing them out to me.

Forbes and Lomax you done good. Welcome to this side of the Atlantic.

22 June 2010

What is design?

A conversation sprung up on Twitter a couple of weeks ago on the topic of what is design. The conversation involved three other bloggers and those blogs are Dog Walk Blog, Modenus, Concrete Detail and me. We chose today to answer the question on our respective home turfs. Follow those links, I know I will. I'm curious to see what the other three came with as a definition of design.

So this leaves me. What is design precisely? Well, I don't know that I have a precise definition for it other than that involves bringing order from chaos. Though this order isn't always wrought by human hands, the perception of design is exclusively human. Obviously. I felt compelled to say that because my working definition of design hinges on it.

Here are some examples of a not uncommon design element, a spiral.

Andromeda via Flickr

via Flickr

via Flickr

via Flickr

The Vatican Museum via Flickr

office tower in Nagoya

via Flickr

sculpture by Peter Coffin at the Saatchi Gallery

Human brains are pattern recognition machines, I say it all the time. We evolved brains that are hard wired to find patterns, whether patterns exist or not. So for me, design is the art of manipulating patterns. There are all manner of rules and regulations that determine what good design is but all good design comes from an awareness of those rules. Good design follows the rules but just as importantly, good design can dispense with the rules all together. What's important is the awareness, not necessarily an adherence.

So to answer the question, design is imposing order on chaos. What do you think? What's design to you?

21 June 2010

Re-imagined indoor and outdoor lights from Vibia

Vibia is a lighting brand made by in Grupo T Diffusion in Barcelona. I saw this light fixture in a hotel lobby in New York a couple of months ago and I was really taken with it.


It turns out that the fixture I saw was the Ameba by Vibia and it's a modular lighting system. You mix and match five interlocking shapes to make an infinite variety of lighting fixtures. They use compact fluorescent bulbs, come prewired and fit together easily. I think they're arresting to see and the design behind them is bordering on genius.




Once I figured out who the manufacturer was, digging around on their website felt like Christmas morning. These people do some amazing stuff.

What impressed me more than anything else was their take on outdoor lighting, Vibia's Tree series in particular. The shapes take their cue from poplar and cypress trees that ring the Mediterranean and I've never seen anything like them.





These outdoor fixtures are weather resistant and use either CFLs or LEDs so they're energy-efficient as well.

But it gets even cooler with the Halley fixtures. The Halley fixtures are all LED, low-voltage lights and I know I've never seen anything like them. As interesting as the walkway lights are, the dining lights take outdoor lighting into a new place all together.




I'm not kidding when I say that Vibia has re-imagined indoor and outdoor lights. Poke around on their site.